Jaipur, Mar 2 (PTI) The BJP on Saturday released its first list of 15 candidates from Rajasthan for the upcoming general elections, naming Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, four Union ministers and a Paralympian.
Rajasthan has 25 parliamentary constituencies.
The party has once again picked former chief minister Vasundhara Raje’s son and sitting MP Dushyant Singh as its candidate from the Jhalawar Baran seat while it also gave tickets to Mahendrajit Malviya and Jyoti Mirdha, who quit the Congress and joined the BJP.
BJP state president and sitting Chittorgarh MP C P Joshi has been retained.
Union ministers Arjun Ram Meghwal from Bikaner, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat from Jodhpur and Kailash Chaudhary from Barmer are among those being repeated from their seats.
Rajya Sabha member and Union Minister Bhupendra Singh will be the party’s candidate from Alwar while Birla has again been fielded from Kota.
Paralympian Devendra Jhajharia is the BJP candidate from Churu and will replace sitting MP Rahul Kaswan while Swami Sumedhanand Saraswati has retained his constituency of Sikar.
Jhajharia, a Paralympic javelin thrower and the first Indian athlete to win two Gold medals at the Paralympics expressed gratitude to the party leadership for the ticket.
“There is great enthusiasm among sportspersons. I am a son of a farmer and farmers are also happy with this development,” he told reporters here.
BJP state president Joshi, a two-time MP from Chittorgarh, said the BJP will win all the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
“People have immense faith in the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and we will win all 25 seats in the state,” he said.
Birla, a two-time MP from Kota-Bundi, thanked Modi for reposing his faith in him.
The party has fielded Bhupendra Yadav from the Alwar seat that was vacated after Baba Balaknath resigned as a Member of Parliament following his victory in the Rajasthan Assembly election from Tijara.
Some of the new candidates are Ram Swarup from Bharatpur, Lumbaram Chaudhary from Jalore and Mannalal from Udaipur.
The party nominated Mahendrajit Malviya from Banswara. Malviya, who was a minister in the last Congress government, resigned as MLA after joining the BJP.
The party has fielded Mirdha from Nagaur. Mirdha left Congress to join the BJP ahead of the 2023 assembly elections.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP gave the Nagaur seat to NDA partner Rashtriya Loktantrik Party. RLP candidate Hanuman Beniwal had won the seat by defeating Mirdha. PTI SDA RHL
